FreeBSD droplet ssh - only worked when id_rsa had 644 permission

Posted on February 12, 2016

Hi all,

Had lots of troubles ssh’ing into my new FreeBSD droplet until I set the id_rsa permissions to 644. 600 did not work and it gave the following error:

debug1: key_load_private_type: Permission denied

Is 644 permission for the ssh private key OK? Should I be worried?

Permissions for ~/.ssh:

mike@mike-laptop:~$ stat -c "%a" .ssh
700

Permissions for ~/.ssh/ialavtsdb1 (folder which has FreeBSD droplet keys):

mike@mike-laptop:~/.ssh$ stat -c "%a" ialavtsdb1
755

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Eris Castrogivanni

February 14, 2016

Hello,

This seems like a client-side issue, and no, it’s generally not a good idea to grant read access to your private key to any users besides yourself. Which OS is your laptop running? On my mac, the private key has -rw------- permissions, and my public key is set to -rw-r–r–.

Also, ~/.ssh/ is set to drwx------. This setup works well for me.

Regards, Eris Platform Support Specialist